{"id":3489954,"date":"2026-05-13T16:22:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/origin-lab-secures-8m-to-assist-video-game-firms-in-selling-data-to-world-model-developers\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T16:22:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:22:01","slug":"origin-lab-secures-8m-to-assist-video-game-firms-in-selling-data-to-world-model-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/origin-lab-secures-8m-to-assist-video-game-firms-in-selling-data-to-world-model-developers\/","title":{"rendered":"Origin Lab secures $8M to assist video game firms in selling data to world-model developers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As artificial intelligence starts to engage with the physical environment, innovative labs are developing world models intended for controlling physical robotics or simulating objects in tangible space. Unlike large language models, acquiring data for these models is not straightforward, leaving numerous labs in a rush to compile the needed training datasets.<\/p>\n

Currently, a startup is emerging with an unexpected data source: the gaming industry.<\/p>\n

This is the concept behind Origin Lab, which has just revealed an $8 million seed funding round, spearheaded by Lightspeed Ventures. SV Angel, Eniac, Seven Stars, and FPV also joined in, along with angel investments from Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and Cruise founder Kyle Vogt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AI systems currently being developed need to grasp how the physical world operates and how objects move,\u201d co-CEO and co-founder Anne-Margot Rodde stated to TechCrunch. \u201cThat information essentially resides in video games.\u201d The company\u2019s other co-founders (shown above) are Antoine Gargot and Colin Carrier.<\/p>\n

In essence, Origin Lab will function as a marketplace where labs focused on world modeling, such as Yann LeCun\u2019s AMI Labs or Fei-Fei Li\u2019s World Labs, can acquire high-quality licensed data. Conversely, video game companies can generate additional revenue from the digital assets they have already produced. In between, Origin Lab will transform the video game assets into a format suitable for training data \u2014 which might be as straightforward as conducting a rendering run or as intricate as automating hours of gameplay footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became evident that the video game industry was harboring some extraordinarily valuable data, but there was no genuine method or framework to effectively connect AI labs and the gaming sector,\u201d Rodde explains. \u201cSo, we effectively constructed that bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labs have long been intrigued by video game footage as a potential data resource, but licensing and quality issues have frequently posed challenges. In December 2024, OpenAI sparked a minor controversy when the initial iteration of its Sora video-generation model appeared to replicate footage of popular games and streamers \u2014 likely because it was trained on Twitch streams. Amazon has expressed its intent to leverage Twitch footage for training models.<\/p>\n

Origin\u2019s triumph in fundraising reflects a burgeoning market \u2014 not only for training data but for startups capable of being vital suppliers to prominent AI labs. Faraz Fatemi, a partner at Lightspeed who led the investment in Origin, asserts that the success of companies like Scale AI has made the opportunity too significant to overlook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve witnessed how rapid revenue growth can be for data vendors supporting the leading labs,\u201d Fatemi informed TechCrunch. \u201cThese are highly capitalized enterprises, and the data is the bottleneck for all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/div>\n
\n

As artificial intelligence starts to engage with the physical environment, innovative labs are developing world models intended for controlling physical robotics or simulating objects in tangible space. Unlike large language models, acquiring data for these models is not straightforward, leaving numerous labs in a rush to compile the needed training datasets.<\/p>\n

Currently, a startup is emerging with an unexpected data source: the gaming industry.<\/p>\n

This is the concept behind Origin Lab, which has just revealed an $8 million seed funding round, spearheaded by Lightspeed Ventures. SV Angel, Eniac, Seven Stars, and FPV also joined in, along with angel investments from Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and Cruise founder Kyle Vogt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AI systems currently being developed need to grasp how the physical world operates and how objects move,\u201d co-CEO and co-founder Anne-Margot Rodde stated to TechCrunch. \u201cThat information essentially resides in video games.\u201d The company\u2019s other co-founders (shown above) are Antoine Gargot and Colin Carrier.<\/p>\n

In essence, Origin Lab will function as a marketplace where labs focused on world modeling, such as Yann LeCun\u2019s AMI Labs or Fei-Fei Li\u2019s World Labs, can acquire high-quality licensed data. Conversely, video game companies can generate additional revenue from the digital assets they have already produced. In between, Origin Lab will transform the video game assets into a format suitable for training data \u2014 which might be as straightforward as conducting a rendering run or as intricate as automating hours of gameplay footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became evident that the video game industry was harboring some extraordinarily valuable data, but there was no genuine method or framework to effectively connect AI labs and the gaming sector,\u201d Rodde explains. \u201cSo, we effectively constructed that bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labs have long been intrigued by video game footage as a potential data resource, but licensing and quality issues have frequently posed challenges. In December 2024, OpenAI sparked a minor controversy when the initial iteration of its Sora video-generation model appeared to replicate footage of popular games and streamers \u2014 likely because it was trained on Twitch streams. Amazon has expressed its intent to leverage Twitch footage for training models.<\/p>\n

Origin\u2019s triumph in fundraising reflects a burgeoning market \u2014 not only for training data but for startups capable of being vital suppliers to prominent AI labs. Faraz Fatemi, a partner at Lightspeed who led the investment in Origin, asserts that the success of companies like Scale AI has made the opportunity too significant to overlook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve witnessed how rapid revenue growth can be for data vendors supporting the leading labs,\u201d Fatemi informed TechCrunch. \u201cThese are highly capitalized enterprises, and the data is the bottleneck for all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3489955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3489954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3489954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3489955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3489954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3489954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3489954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}